The begining of this essay talks about the differences between written and oral language and that many of the differences have not been studied up to this point. It also talks about the role that rhetoric plays in writing. The main point in this essay, however, is the role of the audience in written and oral language. Ong says that " for the speaker, the audience is in front of him. For the writer, the audience is simply further away in time and space." I agree with the statement. I feel that this is where the idea of the audience being "fiction" comes into play. When writing, as opposed to speaking, the writer cannot see his/her audience, so they must imagine it.
It took me a while to get into this essay and really start to understand where the author was coming from. In the begining, I couldn't tell what Ong's point was, he seemed to be all over the place. It wasn't until he started talking about the writer imagining his/her audience that I began to see his point. I also felt that there was too much academic jargon in this writing. Then again, college students were probably not his intended audience. I felt it was a fairly simple point and it could have been stated much clearer and in a much more simple way.
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1 comment:
Interesting reflections, Tara. It seems that you might characterize Ong's invented audience as highly educated intellectuals familiar with the jargon of literary studies. Furthermore, his invented audience has at least passing knowledge of Latin!
Can you make any connections between Ong's article and other articles we've read?
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